1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to displaying information through a browser window at a client computer system connected to a network, and more specifically to limiting the number of unsolicited browser windows that can be generated on the client computer system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computational devices continue to proliferate throughout the world, there also continues to be an increase in the use of networks connecting these devices. Computational devices include large mainframe computers, workstations, personal computers, laptops and other portable devices including wireless telephones, personal digital assistants, automobile-based computers, etc. Such portable computational devices are also referred to as “pervasive” devices. The term “computer” or “computational device”, as used herein, may refer to any of such device which contains a processor and some type of memory.
The computational networks may be connected in any type of network including the Internet, an intranet, a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN). The networks connecting computational devices may be “wired” networks, formed using lines such as copper wire or fiber optic cable, wireless networks employing earth and/or satellite-based wireless transmission links, or combinations of wired and wireless network portions. Many such networks may be organized using a client/server architecture, in which “server” computational devices manage resources, such as files, peripheral devices, or processing power, which may be requested by “client” computational devices. “Proxy servers” can act on behalf of other machines, such as either clients or servers.
A widely used network is the Internet. The Internet, initially referred to as a collection of “interconnected networks”, is a set of computer networks, possibly dissimilar, joined together by means of gateways that handle data transfer and the conversion of messages from the sending network to the protocols used by the receiving network. When capitalized, the term “Internet” refers to the collection of networks and gateways that use the TCP/IP suite or protocols.
Currently, the most commonly employed method of transferring data over the Internet is to employ the World Wide Web environment, referred to herein as “the Web”. Other Internet resources exist for transferring information, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Gopher, but have not achieved the popularity of the Web. In the Web environment, servers and clients effect data transfer using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a known protocol for handling the transfer of various data files (e.g., text, still graphic images, audio, motion video, etc.).
A Web browser is a software program running at a client computer system that displays Web pages from the Internet. The Web browser displays the information by interpreting the markup language (e.g., Hypertext Markup Language, HTML; Wireless Markup Language, WML; Extended Markup Language, XML; Standard Generalized Markup Language, SGML; etc.) used to build home pages on the Web. The coding in a markup language file tells the browser how to display the text, graphics, links and multimedia files on the home page. The Web browser also interprets tags within the Web page document as links to other Web sites, or to Web resources, such as graphics, multimedia files, news groups, or files to download.
Sometimes these links to other Web sites automatically produce advertisements that appear on the user's display by telling the browser to open another window to show the advertisement content. These advertisements appear to automatically “pop-up” in separate windows on the user's display screen. It is not uncommon for one advertising window to contain links to other advertising content such that a succession of browser windows are being generated, i.e., “popping up”. This rampant opening of additional windows either in front of or behind the current window is referred to as a “popup storm” or “window storm.” In extreme cases, these windows can make it difficult, if not impossible, to gain access to the information requested in the only window actually requested by the user. Needless to say, having windows automatically pop-up can be annoying to users.
In response to the use of “pop-up” windows by advertisers, “pop-up” killer applications are currently available on the market. These applications can notice when a browser window is to be opened. Some of the “pop-up” killer applications can prevent all browser windows from opening unless a specific key is pressed down by the user. Other “pop-up” killer applications can prevent all browser windows from opening after a certain number of browser windows have previously been opened. Once the number of opened windows exceeds a certain number, subsequent windows are killed. Other “pop-up” killer applications check for size, content, a specific URL, or a window name of the browser window to determine whether or not the “pop-up” window should be killed.
A problem with currently available “pop-up killer” applications that limit the number of windows from opening is that the user may indeed need to open multiple windows. In some “pop-up killer” applications, a user cannot have more than the predetermined number of browser windows opened at a given time even though the user may have intended to separately open them.
Another technique that advertisers tend to use that annoys, rather than informs, the user is the technique of creating new windows through “On Exit” functionality of a browser. For example, when the user attempts to close the browser, the actions taken when closing the current window cause the creation of another window, thereby spawning another pop-up storm.